I am building a 1940 ford tudor. I am trying to lay things out on paper so I will know where I am headed. I first thought about putting in a 350 but that was a year ago when fuel was $2.00/gal. Now I am thinking about a diesel. Could anyone offer some suggestion into an economical engine (good mpg, dependable, easy to work on, etc.)? This car will be a daily driver (not to worried about HP).

Well diesel is a lot more the gas here in my little town, yea you may get a little more per gallon depending on what you are doing with it, but it's gonna get in the deep parts of your pockets at fill up time. I would suggest going with a straight 6. From my expierience those engines can really produce good HP and torque and still get 20-25+ MPG hwy/ 15-18 mpg in town. Atleast my wagoneer did, and she'd eat some mud too!! Look and the 144cid engine in the old Falcon's, it was only rated at 90HP but it pulled those old sleds around OK, and still got nearly 30MPG. Just my thoughts, good luck.

Diesel motor will destroy the value if you sell....plus they stink!...Do you really want to show up at a cruise like that

Seriously, Magoo built a diesel 32 roadster for a guy who owned a trucking company and maybe wanted to be "different". The car failed to sell on ebay after the guy had it for a long time and wanted to sell it.. who would want it?

Locate a 305 Chevy engine with a factory roller cam. Build it with the correct components like a small camshaft aimed at high mileage and high torque, a good set of heads, small tube headers, a good ignition system, a edelbrock performer intake and a Q-jet carb, get the compression ratio around 9.5:1 and the quench distance around .045, tune it correctly, use a 700R4 transmission with some 3.42 rear gears, and you`ll find it has good power, excellant throttle response, and likely over 20 MPG.

The same could be said for the 302" Ford. Don't try to reinvent the wheel. I'd buy a COMPLETE from fan to fuel pump later 302" Mustang engine with AOD or 5-speed, drop it in using one of the aftermarket wiring harnesses and that will be as good as you could ever hope to do shadetree.

I agree with all about the diesel, love my old Powerstroke but not in a '40 tudor..........gives me shivers!!! How bout a 231" Buick V-6 if a sbc doesn't suit you. They can be economical and theres quite a bit of go fast stuff out there if you want to play.

If you want mileage, forget all about the big capacity cast iron pushrod V8 dinosaurs.

Start looking at late model Japanese all aluminum V6's. Half the engine weight and probably similar power, and it will have four camshafts and 24 valves, electronic fuel injection, and rev as smooth as silk, and probably already have a six speed gearbox already fitted to it.

Yes I agree an LS7 wonder motor, or even a "little" LS1 would be good too.

But if you are truly chasing mileage, why do you need 500 horsepower ?

In a light vehicle 200 to 250 horsepower should be more than enough.

And no. Carbs and distributors are a backward step. Once you have fitted a really good fully tunable aftermarket engine management system, and tuned it with a laptop computer yourself, nobody would fit a carb to a road car EVER again.

Wow! Didn't expect so many replies so quickly. Thank you all for the suggestions. The diesel i was thinking about would was either a VW or an Isuzu diesel. But after all your suggestion I am now thinking about a LS1 or Jap. V-6. Someone commented about carb and dist aren't the way to go. Are computers and fuel injection the way to go. In cars now i see that they control way to much (Ex. If a sensor goes bad or reads wrong everything changes or stops working all together and get that stupid dummy light). Hate that dummy light.

Since I like fords I would say find a wrecked Mustang and pull the 302 tranny and rearend out and put under your car. The old 6 cylinders get pretty good mileage. The 250 in my maverick got 20+ mpg and I drove it hard. Some guys on the maverick site are claiming 25+mpg with a well tuned one and light right foot

Agree, a carb and distributor is no way to improve fuel mileage, but they don't exist for late Japanese V6s anyway. However, not one hot rodder in ten thousand would be capable of transplanting a late-model EFI, crank-trigger Japanese V6 into his car. There aren't any aftermarket wiring harnesses, or info on where to go to defeat the anti-theft devices. One local rod shop spent literally months and thousands trying to get a late Nissan V6 to run in an old Datsun pickup. They planned ahead enough to get all the OEM harness, but the computer thought it had been stolen and activated the anti-theft system, so the engine wouldn't start. Nissan wouldn't talk to them and there was no aftermarket support for the stock system.

Electronic fuel injection completely cuts the fuel on closed throttle overun, a carb cannot do that.
Fuel injection can run closed loop, so that an oxygen sensor in the tailpipe constantly adjusts the air fuel mixture during steady freeway cruise, for best economy. A carb cannot do that either.
Fuel injection sprays an extremely fine fuel mist which creates much cleaner burning, and smoother running below full engine operating temperature. The choke on a carb dribbles in extra raw fuel into a stone cold engine to stop it from stalling. Extremely wasteful of fuel.
A carb has many different internal fuel and air circuits to tune, idle, main system, transition holes, power system, air corrector jets, accelerator pump, and so on. Some of these may be non adjustable on your particular carb. No matter how good you are, a carb can never be perfect. And it can never be set right for all induction air and engine operating temperatures. Fuel injection can change the air/fuel mixture to suit induction air, and engine operating temperature, a carb cannot.
Electronic injection is far more flexible and easier to adjust, a few computer key strokes and you can change absolutely anything, even while the engine is running. There are no cars manufactured anywhere in the world today with a carb. And that should tell you something.

A mechanical distributor has only centrifugal and vacuum advance/retard and these can only generate a very limited range of ignition timing settings. Electronic engine management can have ANY sort of weird experimental characteristics you need to program into it without any limitations at all. Vastly more flexible, and it is not subject to gradual wear or long term change like a mechanical system is.

Modern engines are pretty good, and electronics and computers are an important part of that. Carbs and points type ignition is for restorations only these days, or non performance street application.

If you are really serious about fuel economy, forget the old technology.

There aren't any aftermarket wiring harnesses, or info on where to go to defeat the anti-theft devices. One local rod shop spent literally months and thousands trying to get a late Nissan V6 to run in an old Datsun pickup. They planned ahead enough to get all the OEM harness, but the computer thought it had been stolen and activated the anti-theft system, so the engine wouldn't start. Nissan wouldn't talk to them and there was no aftermarket support for the stock system.

thnx, jack vines

Two practical ways to do something like this.

initially You transplant EVERYTHING, engine, transmission, and engine management computer plus complete original wiring loom into your rod. The only problem with doing that is the factory management will very likely not be tunable, but it will pas smog test and be legal.

The other way is to ditch everything, just fit the basic bare engine with the original fuel injectors. You then buy an aftermarket engine management system which will include loom and all the new engine sensors. That then plugs into a laptop and you can program it to suit the engine. If you then decide for example, to fit headers and a cam, (or maybe a turbo), you can quickly reprogram the whole system to suit.

That is what I did, and the engine started and ran well very first attempt. These standard kits will fit absolutely anything from a small single cylinder engine to a vastly huge V16.

You go through the program menus and tell it how many cylinders, what the capacity of each cylinder is, how many ignition coils there are, the capacity of each fuel injector, and so on. Just go through and answer all the questions it asks.
It is as simple as that. The instruction book will give some examples of how to initially map the fuel and ignition timing with examples, and the engine will start and run first go.

Register Now

In order to be able to post messages on the Hot Rod Forum : Hotrodders Bulletin Board forums, you must first register.
Please enter your desired user name (usually not your first and last name), your email address and other required details in the form below.

User Name:

Password

Please enter a password for your user account. Note that passwords are case-sensitive.

Password:

Confirm Password:

Email Address

Please enter a valid email address for yourself.

Email Address:

Insurance

Please select your insurance company (Optional)

Log-in

User Name

Remember Me?

Password

Human Verification

In order to verify that you are a human and not a spam bot, please enter the answer into the following box below based on the instructions contained in the graphic.